Picks and Pans Review: "and So It Goes"

Linda Ellerbee is an acquired taste, like enchiladas as God meant them to be served: flame-thrower-hot with no sour cream for weak Yankees. Texas-born, brunette, zaftig and acutely smart in a medium where bimbos come in both sexes, the 41-year-old Ellerbee has developed a following as the irreverent co-anchor on the 1982-83 show NBC News Overnight and for her current weekly TGIF segment on Today. Her blessedly biting memoirs prove she was writing her own material on the literate but poorly rated Overnight, the cancellation of which was protested vigorously by thousands of fans. "All I mean to do here is tell a few good stories," she writes. She delivers with a couple of whoppers from her days as a body-chasing police reporter in Houston to the White House beat where, she swears, a CIA official warned, "Remember, the First Amendment is only an amendment." As for Overnight's demise, she blames it on "money—the program wasn't making any." This is funny, honest stuff that's all too revealing about how TV works. (Putnam, $16.95)